This year's North American Association of Food Equipment Manufacturers show, held last week in Orlando, included 550 exhibitors, 130 of which had products or services featured in the "What's Hot! What's Cool!" gallery.

January (12 percent) represents the second-busiest month for LTO launches, behind November (13 percent), according to Technomic research. Pizza players introduced (or extended) their new creations to kick off the New Year.

FastCasual.com sat down with the CEOs or founders of four technology companies serving the restaurant industry  FrontFlip, Breadcrumb, Irisys and GoPago  to find out if their solutions are worth the investment.